Page 34 of The Truth About Love

Auden cracks his eyes open just as I turn the truck into the driveway.

“Pretty girl?” he slurs, his head flopping against the window.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” I can’t help but smile at him. “We’re at my house, think you can manage to make it up the stairs on your own?”

“Wh-what? Yeah. Yeah.” And then his chin hits his chest as he falls immediately back to sleep.

I jostle him awake.

“Come on, birthday boy. I can’t get you up there on my own.”

He nods slowly and slips from the cab, following me to the door with uncoordinated, stumbling steps.

As soon as we make it to my room, I take him to my bathroom and force him onto the toilet. He can piss sitting down tonight. I’m not cleaning up piss, not even for the boy looking up at me with the brightest, most bashful, drunken smile.

“I wish you were my girlfriend,” he sighs wistfully.

“What?”

“If you were my girlfriend, you could come see me play and wear my football jersey and stand with the other girlfriends and scream my name and then when I win, I could kiss you in front of everyone. Man, that would be so awesome. Wouldn’t that be so awesome?”

His wide dopey eyes blink up at me and I’m not even sure he knows he’s speaking out loud.

“So awesome, quarterback,” I whisper, surprising myself.

You couldn’t get further outside of my comfort zone than a public display of affection, but the whimsical picture Auden paints makes me more excited than it does anxious.

After he’s done and washed up, I help him out of his jeans and into bed, climbing in beside him wearing an old t-shirt and fresh panties.

Like always, his arm instantly curls around me and pulls my body into his. “Hey, Summer-Raine?”

“Mm?”

“Will you be my girlfriend?” His voice is just a slur murmured into my hair, reminding me that the question is nothing more than a product of the alcohol in his bloodstream.

“Tell you what,” I whisper. “If you can remember asking me in the morning and you still feel the same, I’ll give you my answer then.”

And despite the monsters raging wars in my mind and the fact that I’m still very much the same cynical renegade I’ve always been, I know exactly what my answer will be.

Just so long as he remembers.

Chapter Nine

Auden

The worst hangover of my life hits me before I’ve even woken up.

I don’t know what the hell I had to drink last night, but I know that whatever it was I never want to drink it again.

What even happened last night?

I remember arriving at the beach, having driven myself because I was an idiot who trusted Fred when he said it’d just be a small get together of our close friends, so I wasn’t expecting to drink more than one beer. I remember the dread that filled me when I saw everyone scattered across the sand. It took me so long to convince Summer-Raine to agree to the bonfire back when it was only ten or so people, I knew that there was no way in hell she’d ever come if she knew that half the senior class had shown up.

And just that thought alone almost ruined my night.

Because, even surrounded by so many of my friends who had come to get drunk in honour of my birthday, the only person I actually wanted to spend the night with was her.

Did she turn up? Did she see everyone on the beach and go straight back home? Is she mad at me now?

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